Final electoral rolls of Jammu and Kashmir after nearly five months long revision exercise undertaken after a gap of three years will be published tomorrow amid indications that increase in voters was “around seven lakh” which will take total number of electorates in the UT to 83 lakh.
All 20 Deputy Commissioners in Jammu and Kashmir had been designated as District Electoral Officers (DEO) for the electoral revision. Nearly 13,000 employees were involved in the hectic exercise. The Election Commission had ordered Special Summary Revision for J&K on July 1.
While exact number of increase in voters will be known today only after publication of electoral rolls, there were reports that increase has been confined to seven lakh, the sources said.
Jammu and Kashmir had 76 lakh voters when last Summary Revision was undertaken in 2018. And increase of seven lakh voters in last three years is “normal”. During earlier revisions also, there used to be an average increase of two lakh voters every year. Therefore, increase of seven lakh voters is not significant and fear psychosis created by certain political parties that “outsiders” will get voting rights in Jammu and Kashmir has turned out to be wrong
While splitting Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories through the Reorganization Act, the Union Home Ministry had increased Assembly seats of Jammu and Kashmir by seven taking total seats to 114—24 of which are reserved for PoJK while election will be held for 90 seats.
Erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir had 111 seats including 24 reserved for PoJK while elections were held for 87 seats. With creation of Ladakh as Union Territory, four seats of the region were reduced and the Assembly was left with 83 seats. However, with increase of seven seats, J&K UT will have an Assembly of 90 seats. Two women MLAs will be nominated to the House, which was the position earlier also.
In the previous Assembly, Kashmir had 46 seats, Jammu 37 and Ladakh
